Pacing Life from Values

How training shows the way

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Understanding Your Own Pacing

This week is all bout understanding the value of pacing, knowing when to move fast and when to slow down and pivot.

Yesterday, I wrote about a common issue myself and a bunch of the dudes in my ‘Temple’ coaching group experience, mainly how a series of small little bad moments can can build negative momentum that all of a sudden overtakes our will to keep up with our desire to become better versions of ourselves.

It became a great coaching moment to talk bout the importance of turning that momentum around, and it was learned from my experiences coaching athletes deep in the pain cave through ultramarathons. Check it out if you missed it yesterday.

Winning the day often looks like this

What’s most important to understand about making sure you can identify these moments and being able to turn them around quickly is recognizing how pacing scales from day, to week, to month, to year, and around again.

You can learn to flow in between these different time frames when your training is aimed from the heart, with your values in mind, to elevate your life and yourself towards your greatest potential.

Let me explain how it works for me and how I teach it to my guys and then I’ll share how you can start to flow in between paces that best reflect your life and what speed you need to be going at different moments.

Crafting Your Pace from Your Values

The day last week where I felt a bit down came at the end of a seven days in my house hold. Everybody in the house got run down by a cold starting with my daughter and then ending with me.

In terms of my training, this meant slowing down, considerably. I did not get out for a long weekend run at sunrise, it wouldn’t have been appropriate. I also didn’t have the energy to get up early and grind to be back for either of the kids activities on the weekend (both have 9am, one on Saturday and one on Sunday). Instead I realized I needed a different pace.

I’m also not in a major training block, my next race isn’t for another two months, so I have some time to not go HARD. My days become informed by my weeks, which become informed by my months, which are informed by my years.

What happens is opportunities open up. Instead of going on and hitting big miles when my body, and my family, weren’t really open to it, I found spot on the weekend to drive out to the site of my next race and go on a relaxed recon run.

So when I’m at the end of a period of days where I’m slowing down, it’s not surprising that I’ll end up in a space where I want to stop altogether, just like what happened and I described in yesterday’s article. Recognizing the overall pacing allowed me to put in that pattern break (more on these tomorrow) and regain positive momentum in the moment.

I relayed this type of wisdom to a homie in the ‘Temple’ group who mentioned that his weeks always tend to get harder as they go on and it becomes more difficult for him to get motivated to hit the gym with purpose. I suggested a new split idea, hit your hard workouts in the early week when you have mojo, and then ‘taper’ the final few days when your schedule starts to get busy.

What’s the glue that holds this approach together? It’s values.

Because I train to be the best husband and dad, I recognize that I need to be there for my family when they are sick and I can’t train the way I normally would. My guy gives a lot for his family later in the week, and he trains for the same reason, so we find a solution to pace his week through his values.

The key for you today is to tie your training to your values FIRST as a way to figure out the internal pacing that best fits your life today.

You have to know WHY you are devoting all of this time and effort to training, and that in the end it will matter deeply to the things you value most.

For me that’s family, faith, expression, and excellence.

Here’s a simple prompt to help you get started:

What’s one area of my life I need more positive momentum and what value of mine does that connect to?

This will help you understand both a deep value you can actualize through training and a pacing aim to go along with it. Depending on that area, you may need to slow down or speed up, it’s individual, to yourself.

You can drop your response to this prompt in the comments, send me a message using the button below, or reply directly from your email browser if you’d like some help identifying the value and area and crafting a pacing strategy on how to realize it, I’d love to help you get on your way.

This is how we win together team!

Talk again tomorrow